The Test: A Junior Visual Narrative Comic by Cooper Treuhaft (2016)

My story is about a kid taking a history exam. About halfway through the test, he comes across a question that he doesn't know the answer to. The question is about the date of the Magna Carta. In order to try to figure out the answer to this question, he thinks into the past, but goes back too far, thinking about pre-human apes. He then thinks into the future, imagining weird humans and hoverboards, and realizes that this time he went too far into the future. Finally, he gives up and writes down a random number, ''1215,'' which just happens to be the correct answer.

I'd say that the very first step of this project was coming up with a story for the illustration, which ended up being one of the hardest parts for me. From there on I drew out our entire comic in pencil on a piece of graph paper, Focusing on linear perspective and telling my story. Once I completed the initial sketch, I transferred it of to an art board using burnishers, and colored sharpies. I then took pictures of the art boards and transferred the PDF into Adobe Illustrator and began to draw over my sketch, and added all of the fine details, making the final product more crisp and complete. I used the pen tool to create shapes, which is difficult because I'm used to quickly drawing things out, and when using the pen tool you have to spend a lot of time making sure each curve is perfect. Eventually I got used to the pen tool, and it helped make my final project better than my initial sloppy sketch.